Image Credit: Nic Vevers/Australian National University
During most of the Artemis II mission, the crew of four astronauts beamed back low-definition video, both from inside the spacecraft and from exterior views of the Moon. It was exhilarating stuff, but in a world in which we’re all watching HDTVs, it also felt a little flat.
This is because Orion largely communicated with Earth via radio waves, picked up by large dishes sprinkled around the world. This is pretty much the same way the Apollo spacecraft talked to Earth more than half a century ago.